Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Friday, January 3, 2014

April 15, 1912 – Titanic Strikes Iceberg with No Loss of Life

The RMS Titanic was built to be the largest passenger ship in the
world, an Olympic-class vessel 1,000
tons bigger than her sister ship, which was half-again as big as the previous
largest ship. The White Star Line had been outpaced in 1907 by Cunard, whose Lusitania and Mauretania had become the fastest transoceanic passenger ships.
With German lines already beginning to challenge their market share, Chairman
Bruce J. Ismay met with financier JP Morgan, and a trio of new ships would make
White Star the largest and most luxurious way to travel in the world. The Olympic launched in 1911, but it was the
Titanic whose maiden voyage would be
the most anticipated with guests such as the Astors, the Strauses of Macy’s, Margaret
Brown, and even her own architect Thomas Andrews. JP Morgan himself was
supposed to board, but he canceled shortly before, possibly in relation to the
coal strike that postponed many transatlantic crossings.

The strike ended just days
before the Titanic left Southampton.
Captain Edward John Smith, White Star’s most senior captain, commanded. As
stops were made in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, passengers as
well as additional crew were taken on before making the long journey across the
Atlantic. Guests enjoyed conveniences modeled on the Ritz Hotel with artistic
flare in every fashionable style. The ship offered a library, a telephone
system, a pool, gymnasium, and several kinds of baths with nearly as many First
Class passengers as Third.

Due to a warm winter breaking
up the ice shelves of Greenland, ships had already begun spreading word of ice
in the north Atlantic. Despite the warnings, Captain Smith ran the Titanic at near her top speed, not
necessarily attempting to break the records set by Cunard for crossing but to
assure his passengers arrived in a fit and timely manner. He followed the
advisories and relied on his lookouts to keep an eye out for any potential
hazards.

The men in the crow’s nest
were without binoculars due to an equipment error, but those would have been
useless on the night the iceberg appeared. It was a moonless, extremely calm
night, causing the glassy water to reflect starlight and create mirages in the
cold air that obscured the horizon. Just before midnight on April 14, lookout
Frederick Fleet rested his weary eyes before taking another look into the sea
and spotting an iceberg floating immediately before the ship. He called to the
bridge, “Iceberg right ahead!”

First Officer William Murdoch
ordered the engines reversed full astern and the ship to turn, but it was too
late to maneuver around the floating block of ice. The Titanic slammed head-on into the berg, causing all of the
passengers and cargo to lurch forward. Damage to the bow was substantial enough
that the first watertight compartment ruptured, causing icy seawater to flow
inside. Fortunately, Titanic had been
designed to have as many as four of its special compartments flood without
hazard. Multitudinous injuries were reported throughout the ship, but, almost
miraculously, no one was killed.

Captain Smith was roused from
his quarters and directed the ship’s doctors in caring for the most injured.
Emergency flares lit up the sky while wireless calls beckoned for help from
nearby ships. Lifeboats were prepared to launch in the case of an evacuation,
and it was noted that there was only enough room for half of the people aboard
the ship. As the Titanic refused to
sink, however, worries were abated. About 4 o’clock that morning, the RMS Carpathian arrived to give aid, and
the Mount Temple and SS Californian arrived after dawn, when
it was deemed safe to traverse the ice fields. Titanic was eventually deemed seaworthy and continued its journey
to New York at much slower speeds. Thomas Andrews was given a special toast
from the captain’s table and later commendations from a number of boards and
charities.

Inquiry into the accident prompted a great deal of
approval for Andrews’ designs. Naysayers who again warned of too few lifeboats
were mocked in several editorials saying, “What’s the point of a lifeboat if the
ship never sinks?” Others brought up the issue of the Californian switching off its wireless receiver, but investigators
finally sided with Captain Stanley Lord’s decision not to risk another ship at
night in the ice.

Weather would continue to be blamed for many of the worst
maritime tragedies as that fall hundreds of ships would sink in a vicious
typhoon in the Pacific, including the Kiche
Maru from Japan, which lost over one thousand lives. Most agencies put
their efforts into attempting to communicate weather-patterns. Communication
failed in the case of the RMS Empress of
Ireland, which collided with a cargo vessel on the Saint Lawrence River
that led to another loss of over one thousand lives as the ship sank so fast.
In most cases, lifeboats were the least of anyone’s concerns.

The peacetime losses were soon eclipsed by the World War.
In 1914, Britain established a blockade of Germany, and Germany attempted the
same, creating warzones in the North Sea and Atlantic. Thousands perished
aboard ships like the Principe Umberto,
the Gallia, and the Queen Mary as modern warfare such as the
U-boat and mines struck. Ships found themselves woefully unprepared to face
sinking, and even emergency refits and additional lifeboats jammed onto the
sides of ships were deemed untrustworthy. When U-Boat U-20 sank the RMS Lusitania,
once the pride of the Cunard fleet that had been requisitioned into the Navy,
thousands perished with only a handful of survivors. International outrage
overlooked the Lusitania’s munitions supply,
and the German press called the sinking dishonorable even in a war where
British ships painted over their names and flew false flags. At last the German
command ordered an end to unrestricted submarine warfare, instead following
stricter Prize Law rules.

Even with calmer seas, the War dragged on. The infamous
Zimmermann Telegram soured American opinions of Germany, but the public did not
see fit to join a war unless it directly affected their own rights. After
another bitter winter in 1919, Germany finally capitulated and signed a
crippling Treaty of Versailles, while Americans watched from the sidelines,
maintaining its neutrality in the Eastern Hemisphere, as it would for decades
to come.

--

In reality, the Titanic
attempted to maneuver around the iceberg, which struck along the starboard side
in a gash that filled five of the safety compartments. It became the most
famous maritime disaster, having more than 1,500 lives lost in the icy waters
of the North Atlantic, many of them due to the lack of preparation in training
and lifeboats.

A recent theory states that the Titanic, like many ships of the time, had a bunker fire in one of it's coal bunkers. That may have forced Captain Smith to go as fast as he did as they had almost no margin as the fires continued. Snopes has a good summary of the theory.